Case Studies

Technology Maintenance and Support Agreement Review

A Native American Casino Organization with multiple casino properties

Situation

During a time of internal turnover and review, this organization decided to review their IT maintenance and support agreements to look for any possible cost savings. There were a high number of technology agreements entered into by various executives that needed to be reviewed to identify outdated, duplicated services, or obsolete contracts.

Approach

Initially WhiteSand requested all contracts, agreements and related documents to the acquisition of all hardware, software and technology services for the properties. In many cases, original contracts were not available and WhiteSand had to review invoices and contact vendors for the current status of accounts. Once obtained, WhiteSand reviewed and documented each contract and was able to identify opportunities for savings and consolidation by:

Bundling products by specific vendors, the client moved to a higher status and obtained additional discounts;

Identifying products or services no longer needed and removing them from maintenance or support agreements, reducing overall ongoing annual costs;

Identifying agreements that are outdated and updating them with appropriate service levels, vendor companies, and pricing;

Identifying two (or more) products for the same business purpose and identifying products to be removed from ongoing support by implementing newer purchased products;

Identifying marginal charges which could be negotiated lower or deleted from ongoing charges.

Results

This effort resulted in a reduction of ongoing annual fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars while at the same time improving service levels from vendors through consolidation and moving to priority status. WhiteSand was also able to document all ongoing support and maintenance agreements, sometimes where the client had no existing documentation.